F-The Beer and Fags Diet:Chapter Five: Fags

CHAPTER FIVE

Fags

"Cross this stile and turning 30 degrees to your left cross the field
(to the left-hand end of the houses
you can see on the horizon). This will take you up to a plank bridge in
the hedge which you cross before
carrying on along the right-hand side of the next field. In the corner
you will find a more substantial
bridge which leads you to another field. Turn 30 degrees left again and
cross the field to come to a
kissing gate."

Since leaving the road I've been walking through watermeadows. There
are no
cattle around but it can't be because of foot and mouth because this
area wasn't
badly affected. There was only one cull round here and that was ten
miles away at
Chesterton. I'm hurrying now because I want to have a pint back at
Ickford before
it closes after lunch.

My dad spent most of his life trying to beat smoking. I've spent the
whole of my life
trying to stop. My dad's technique was the "gradually cut-down till
you've cut-down to
none" method. When I was a boy he'd buy packs of ten rather than
twenty, then carefully
count out each cigarette at the allotted time. Of course it never
worked, it's probably
never worked for anyone in the history of the world. I used to enjoy
counting the coupons
in the sideboard drawer and browsing through the Embassy catalogue to
see what we
could buy. I'd be pleased when he failed to stop as it meant I'd get
more coupons to play
with. I didn't know it was killing him. I've often wondered if I've
spent my life since he
died in subconsciously trying to emulate him. Like me, he spent his
life fighting beer and
fags. He died when he was forty-four. I'll be forty-four next
month.

I started smoking on a school exchange trip to France. It was 1973 and
I was 15. I stayed
with Boris Christmann and his elder brother Eric in Lyons. The events
of 1968 were still
fairly recent and they both claimed to be anarchists, but I didn't know
what they were
talking about. Boris's family lived in an apartment block on a hill
overlooking the
confluence of the Rhone and the Soane. I spent most of the three weeks
in Boris's
bedroom smoking untipped Gauloise and listening to Led Zeppelin
records. I don't know
why I started smoking, I suppose it was because Boris and Eric were
smoking and there
seemed no reason not to. In fact it seemed cool and great and to be
honest it still does.
Even if I'd known about the health and wealth risks it probably
wouldn't have stopped
me. The kids nowadays know all about the health risks and it doesn't
stop them. The fact
is that at fifteen you really really believe you're immortal. Death is
so far over the
horizon it never enters your head.

I didn't come out of the closet as a smoker until after my dad died. I
was in the sixth form
at school and I was sitting at my desk in my bedroom, doing my
homework. It may have
been the winter of discontent because there was a power cut and I was
using a gas picnic
stove for heat and candles for light. When my mum came into the room I
told her I
smoked. She said "You'd better not!" and that was it, I was an official
smoker. I would
never have dreamed of telling my dad but I knew my mum had no power or
authority
over me. I've often wondered why this was the case but I've never
really got to the
bottom of it. I suppose it was because authority is based in respect.
My dad was
intelligent and well-educated and I respected him. He was also a
six-foot police sergeant,
perhaps he naturally commanded respect. I wanted to be like him and to
be liked by him.
On the other hand, my mother was poorly educated, had no interest in
education and
would let me do whatever I wanted. I didn't have to work for her
devotion. Some people
might see this as a mother's normal unconditional love. Unfortunately,
whilst it's fine for
a young child to give unconditional love to a parent, a child needs
more in return than just
adoration. The episode described above is a typical example. "You'd
better not!" she said
and that was it. There was never another word on the subject. Where was
the explanation
as to why I shouldn't smoke? There should have been threats as to what
she would do if I
continued, and punishments when I did continue. I don't think she could
be bothered.

This was about the time that government health warnings started to
appear. The first ones
were tiny pamphlets exhorting us to smoke healthily (ha-ha). They were
quite a novelty
when they first came out. They were slipped into fag packets and said
things like "If you
must smoke, make sure you take your cigarette out between puffs."
Another one was "If
you must smoke, try and have small puffs instead of big puffs." We were
adolescents and
trying to cope with bodies full of newly arrived hormones, most of
which carried
homophobic tendencies. Oh how we laughed!

Even at that age I knew that it was impossible to stop smoking unless
deep down inside
you really wanted to. I remember saying as much to John Crowther's dad
at John's
seventeenth birthday party. I also said that I felt sure that one day I
would wake up and
really want to stop. I was right but it's not as simple as that. It is
true that you will not
stop unless you really want to, but it doesn't work the other way
round. The fact that you
really want to stop doesn't mean you will. I desperately wanted to stop
from my late
twenties when my health started going downhill, but it took me another
fifteen years. And
I'm not out of the woods yet.

By the end of university I was a hardened smoker on twenty a day. Three
years later at
my accountancy finals I was panicking about how I would get through the
exam papers
without a fag. I would stand outside the exam room with the other
smokers and gulp
down four fags in the ten minutes before the exam started, desperate to
get as much
nicotine into my bloodstream as possible, even though I knew it didn't
work like that.

On my first flight to Saudi I went to the galley where there were
several stewardesses and
asked if I could buy some duty-frees. They smirked condescendingly, as
British Airways
cabin staff were trained to do at the time. Eventually one of them took
pity on me and
explained that fags were cheaper in Saudi than at BA's duty-free price.
I didn't really
believe her, but when I got to Jeddah I found that fags were not only
cheaper but you also
got a free lighter with every two hundred. I was in smoker's heaven for
a while, but
eventually the OCD kicked-in big time. When this happened smoking just
became
another source of anxiety fuelling the OCD furnace. I smoked heavily at
the office and
would fill huge ashtrays with my fag-ends. At some point the ashtrays
would become so
full they would have to be emptied into a waste-paper bin. This was
disastrous for me as
it meant that before leaving the office I would have to stare at the
bin for five or ten
minutes to make sure all the cigarettes were extinguished and weren't
going to ignite the
paper in the bin. I know that this sort of behaviour may seem
ludicrous, but then you've
probably never suffered from OCD. Between waking every morning and
leaving for the
office I would smoke three or four fags. With checking all the ashtrays
for smouldering
cigarettes, making sure all the electrics were off, and checking all
the gas rings were out,
it would take me twenty minutes from starting my leaving ritual to
getting out of the villa
door.

My first serious attempt to stop was when B and I went on holiday to
Portugal in 1989.
We had a private villa with a swimming pool on the Algarve between
Carvoeiro and
Rocha Brava. I spent the days lying by the pool either reading "The
Easy Way to Stop
Smoking" by Allen Carr or listening to a stopping smoking self-hypnosis
tape. These two
were surprisingly effective. I managed to brainwash myself into
stopping. Every night
when we walked into Carvoeiro for dinner I would see people putting
those little white
sticks into their mouths and blowing out smoke and I would think how
ridiculous they
looked. Unfortunately, by the end of the evening I looked even more
ridiculous. After so
many years of smoking I now had nothing to do with my hands and
consequently I was
forever lifting my glass up to my mouth. I ended up completely smashed
every night.

At that time I was still quite a nervous flyer and I was dreading the
flight home, but I
made it without a fag and I even managed to last for a few weeks back
at work.
Unfortunately, as I've already said, it's impossible to stop unless you
really want to, and I
don't think I did want to. If you do somehow manage to stop for a while
you'll soon
rationalize why you've got to start again. My excuse came when I was
promoted to
European Treasury Manager. I had to fly to Frankfurt to take over the
position from a
German who'd screwed it up and was working his notice. Whether you
agree with me
that this was a stressful situation or not, it certainly wasn't
anything that couldn't be
handled without cigarettes. But for me it was a godsend, the perfect
excuse, how could I
possibly face such a scenario without the help of my little white
friends? I started
smoking again.

Years passed and I lost count of the number of times I'd chucked a
half-full packet of
fags out of the car window vowing never to touch them again. Within an
hour I would be
puffing away, having rationalized beyond any possible argument why it
was absolutely
necessary for me to smoke. In due course, having had some limited
success with
relaxation and self-hypnosis I decided to give a real live hypnotist a
chance. At this time
we were living in Buckinghamshire and I phoned a woman I'd found in the
Yellow Pages
who lived just off the M40 near High Wycombe. It was a truly remarkable
experience. I
strongly urge everyone to try hypnosis, not necessarily to stop smoking
but just for the
sake of the hypnosis itself. I arrived at her house and we went into a
dimly lit room with
low music playing. I sat in a recliner chair and in a soft voice she
gently put me into a
trance. There are lots of misconceptions about hypnotism. For instance,
I didn't lose
consciousness and I'm sure I remember everything that happened, but I
felt more relaxed
than I'd ever felt in my life. When she came to the part where she had
to stop me
smoking it felt like she was burning the words into my spine in
pokerwork, but without
any pain. When it was over I thought I'd been in a trance for about ten
minutes. When I
looked at my watch I found I'd been under for an hour. I felt
terrific.

It didn't work but that was partly my fault. I'd stupidly arranged the
session for the
evening before I started a new job where I knew the office would be
non-smoking. By
lunchtime next day I was out in the car park with ten Silk Cut,
wondering why I was
lighting up again.

Nevertheless, my interest in hypnotism had been aroused and I was sure
there was
something there that could help me with my smoking. A couple of years
later I tried it
again, this time in a squalid office in a run-down suburb of Swindon.
The hypnotist was a
seedy middle-aged man wearing a sports jacket. It worked for a couple
of months, but
then I started having the odd cigar in the pub, and before I knew it I
was back on twenty a
day.

I felt that the missing element was that of on-going support. On each
previous occasion
when I left the hypnotist I felt fine and terrific and couldn't wait to
face my fag-free
future. Then over the following days and weeks my enthusiasm and
confidence slowly
seeped away. At that point I wanted to go back to the hypnotist for a
top-up, but both of
them had told me that it was a one-hit technique, that it would work
after just one session
or it wouldn't work at all, and that was that. This point is
interesting, because by saying
this they are turning away the chance to earn money from repeat visits.
To turn down
clear money-making opportunities like this means that they are either
extremely altruistic
and morally pure or they are pitching their marketing at a different,
more subtle level. It
could be that they consider the punter is much more likely to make a
commitment to a
one-off session for fifty quid than a three session course for a
hundred and fifty quid. You
also have to remember that both these hypnotists came up with weak
excuses why they
wouldn't give me a tape of the session or of themselves. I have found
self-hypnosis quite
useful and I really can't think of a good reason why they shoudn't have
let me have a tape
other than to get me to return to them and pay for a further session.
Maybe they aren't
that altruistic after all.

I should have learned my lesson by now but I decided to give hypnotism
one last chance.
I went to a woman in another squalid Swindon office. This time I
explained that I was
happy to book several sessions so that she could provide me with
on-going support.
However, I can't have explained it very well because she thought I
meant support prior to
stopping rather than afterwards. She must have thought she'd won the
jackpot and I
couldn't be bothered arguing. All that happened was that I had two
preparatory sessions
then the same final session I'd had from the previous therapists. The
only difference was
that I paid three times as much.

This time I stayed clean for a few months. As on previous occasions, I
kept up the
pretence of having stopped for a long time after I'd re-started. The
fact that nicotine can
make you behave like this is probably the worst aspect of nicotine or
any other drug
addiction. At this point you are already a slave to your addiction, you
are pitied or
despised by your friends and colleagues and your health is
deteriorating. But you can't
face the shame and the look in your wife's eyes when she realizes
you've failed again, so
you lie in the face of your closest and dearest loved ones, those who
mean more to you
than anyone or anything else, except of course, smoking. By now any
shred of self-
respect you've managed to cling on to is utterly destroyed and replaced
by self-loathing.
Someone who has never been a drug addict can't begin to understand, but
when you get
to this level you're just about at rock bottom. I used to buy packets
of ten rather than
twenty as they were easier to hide. I used to keep them in secret
little hidey-holes around
the house and B never did find them. A favourite place was behind the
wash basin in the
downstairs toilet. I would make up excuses to go to the shop or
post-box then nip into the
loo and put the fag packet and lighter down the front of my trousers.
Then I'd go out on
my errand, have a quick fag or two, and return to the house sucking
mints so that no-one
would smell anything suspicious. If I'd been out in the car I'd have
had to smoke with the
window open because of the stink. I used to make excuses to go to the
pub by myself so
that I could smoke. In fact I used to look forward to all the times
when I had to be apart
from my family so that I could smoke without them knowing. Of course,
all my mates
and most of B's friends knew I was smoking, but B didn't. It was
pathetic and degrading.
Of course I would have denied it, but in retrospect it's quite clear
from my actions alone
that this fucking bastard drug was more important to me than my wife
and children. This
is what nicotine does to you. Welcome to Marlboro Country.

I became so practiced at this deceit that I once kept it going for
years. During this time I
used to dread family holidays as I would be with the wife and kids all
day and not get
many chances for a quick drag. I would wake up every morning and my
first thought
would be about how I was going to get that day's nicotine. Against all
the odds I got
away with several annual holidays without being caught. I also used to
dread social
events. I would sneak to the loo or round a corner and try and get a
complete fag down
my neck in three big lungfuls so that my absence wouldn't be noticed or
questioned.

With each new winter the tightness in my chest became worse and my
breathing became
more laboured. I knew that every year my health was progressively
failing and that it was
caused by smoking. My biggest scare came one summer in the late
nineties. I'd just
returned from a round-the-world business trip. I'd flown from London to
Denver to
Seattle to Tokyo and continued west to London, all in the space of ten
days. I'm a poor
traveler and I arrived home physically and mentally shattered. Then I
started to get pains
in my neck and throat and I found it difficult to swallow. I knew it
wasn't a sore throat, it
just didn't feel like one. In those days when no-one else was around I
would slip out to
the garage for a smoke. One Sunday afternoon I stood smoking in the
garage doorway,
contemplating my situation. I knew I had throat cancer. It felt like
throat cancer. Oh boy,
I'd really gone and done it this time, I wasn't going to be able to
talk myself out of this
one. I resigned myself to my death, to leaving my children without a
father and my wife
without a husband, to not seeing my children grow up. It was all
because of smoking.
And I stood there with a cigarette in my hand.

The next day I went to see my doctor. My voice shook as I explained my
symptoms and
concern. He felt the glands in my neck. "No swelling there," he said in
his soft Borders
accent, "so I shouldn't worry yourself about cancer." I nearly wept
with joy and relief. He
took a swab of my throat for analysis and two days later phoned to say
I had a throat
infection. I'd probably picked it up during my trip whilst breathing
the filthy, recycled,
bug-ridden muck that airlines pass off as air. So I got away with it.
In fact there was
never anything to get away with. You probably think I made a great big
fuss about
nothing, but it's how your mind works when you're a paranoid nicotine
addict.

When I did eventually stop it came right out of the blue. By now I'd
been studying my
smoking habit for twenty-five years and at the end of this time I was
no nearer to an
understanding of why I did it. I had given up the hard stuff and was
smoking ultra-low
cigarettes with hardly any nicotine or tar. So why was it so difficult
to even consider
stopping? Despite what people think, it's not because of the terrible
nicotine withdrawal
symptoms. These aren't terrible at all. The nicotine levels in your
bloodstream halve
every hour, so if the physical withdrawal symptoms of nicotine were so
bad then no
smoker would ever be able to sleep through the night. I didn't smoke to
have something
to do with my hands and mouth. If that was it then there'd be no reason
to light the
cigarette. Smoking doesn't aid concentration, it destroys it when your
mind interrupts you
to say you need a fix. Smoking doesn't take away boredom. If I had a
fag because I was
bored I wouldn't even realize I was smoking it, the fag would be down
to the end before I
knew it was there. As Winston Churchill said about Russia, my addiction
remained a
riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Then I read a book called "The Only Way To Stop Smoking Permanently" by
Allen Carr.
I'd read his previous book, "The Easy Way To Stop Smoking", and even
though it didn't
work for me it made a lot of sense. But "Easy Way" was a slim tome for
nancy-boy
smokers. The "Only Way" was four hundred and fifty pages of dense
prose. This was the
one for the battle-hardened cynic like me.

If Allen Carr were an Olympic ice skater he would get 5/5 for technical
merit and 0/5 for
artistic merit. His writing style is appalling and his constant use of
Americanisms is
particularly irritating. However, literary merit is hardly the point,
these books are about
stopping smoking. Carr is the only person I've ever come across who has
a truly deep
understanding of smoking and his technique for stopping is extremely
effective. Put very
simply he explains that the physical withdrawal symptoms are
insignificant, it's the
psychological fear of the perceived physical withdrawal symptoms that's
the problem.
But as he's already explained, these symptoms are insignificant. Now,
if you think this is
going round in circles then you're dead right. His technique works by
repeatedly showing
time and time again that there are no withdrawal symptoms and by
demolishing every
reason a smoker could ever have for continuing to smoke, and therefore
showing that
there is nothing to be scared of when you do stop. It amounts to
de-brainwashing then re-
programming but who cares, it really works. About one third of the way
through "The
Only Way" I ran out of fags and didn't bother buying any more. This was
at one of the
most stressed periods of my life, just before the New York meeting that
sealed my fate,
when my career was collapsing in ruins around me. Allen Carr must feel
good knowing
he's saved thousands of lives. I only made one mistake, I failed to
follow his strict
instruction not to substitute cigarettes with something else, and now
I'm hooked on
nicotine gum. Who cares, it's better than dying.

Like many people I can remember exactly where I was when I learned
about the
Lockerbie disaster. I was parking my car outside a McDonalds in
Birmingham when I
heard radio reports of fireballs falling out of the sky where there
should've been a jumbo
jet. This atrocity caused untold misery to the families of those who
lost loved ones and
sparked a worldwide manhunt. The bombing took place over a decade ago
and the
culprits have only recently been brought to justice. Around two hundred
and fifty people
died at Lockerbie. Consider for a moment then that around three hundred
people die
every day in Britain from smoking. Why don't we hear so much about this
scandal? Why
is this atrocity not on the front page of every newspaper? The grief
and desolation caused
by this obscenity is even greater than that caused by Lockerbie, and it
happens every
single day, so where is the worldwide manhunt for the killers? It's
thought that around six
thousand people died in the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers,
sparking a potential
world war. Six thousand deaths? Pah! Peanuts! We can rack up six
thousand deaths in the
UK just by smoking for twenty days.

Who's to blame? Well of course the tobacco companies can take their
share. Never ever
underestimate the depths to which these bastards will sink. Many years
ago in the United
States there was some sort of very high level government investigation
into smoking. The
big issue at the time was whether nicotine was addictive or not. The
top men at each of
the big tobacco companies were asked to stand in front of the court and
swear that they
did not believe nicotine to be addictive. Each of these men knew that
their companies had
carried out research that proved conclusively that not only was
nicotine addictive, but that
smoking caused lung cancer. I have seen a film clip where these men
rose one by one in
front of the court and swore "I do not believe that nicotine is
addictive". I was incoherent
with rage as I watched it. These people were lying through their teeth
so that they could
continue to make people pay them for the privilege of an early and
painful death. The
stuff that goes on today is no better. The tobacco industry loses
thousands of customers
each day through death or enlightenment. What sort of scum targets
third world children
to replace these markets?

But governments, particularly western governments are barely any
better. When it comes
to sheer bare-faced hypocrisy the British government takes some
beating. Despite what
they say, our government absolutely adores smoking. They allocate a
tiny budget to anti-
smoking campaigns so they can be seen to be doing something, while all
the time they
rake in billions from tobacco taxes that get higher and higher every
year. And here's the
perfect irony, the people paying these usurious taxes will die early
and not need the
healthcare and pensions they are paying for. In a report written for
some Eastern
European government Phillip Morris Inc actually promoted this as a
reason to encourage
smoking. Down at the Treasury they must be wetting their pants with
laughter.
Furthermore, smoking is becoming more and more a working class habit.
By working
class I include the unemployed and single-parent families. These are
the people in our
society who can least afford to be the victims of this wicked scam.
Consider the case of
the smoking single mother trying to get by on benefit. In order to
smoke she has pay a
significant part of her income in tax. She will never see the benefit
of this tax as she will
die early from smoking before she's collected much pension. On the
other hand the
middle classes don't have to pay this tax as they don't smoke. They
will however live
long lives and enjoy lengthy retirements. The single mother is
effectively subsidising
middle class pensions. Is it any wonder she's got no money and has to
go on the street to
feed the kids? God, these people have a lot to answer for.

So what can we do to end this disgraceful situation? Speaking as an
ex-smoker and
therefore an expert, I have no doubt that the single best thing we can
all do is to change
the way we, as a society, perceive smoking and smokers. If we really
want to do
something about this evil we must stop attaching a stigma to smoking
and stop regarding
smokers primarily as anti-social lepers. Smokers should be seen as
people who have had
the misfortune to acquire a regrettable addiction and who need
understanding,
encouragement and support in order to overcome it. We should maybe even
relax some
of the current controls which discourage smoking. Let me tell you why.
If there is one
message I want to get across to the non-smokers of this world it is
this. I know without
any shadow of a doubt that the more that smokers are bullied,
threatened and frightened,
the more they will retreat into the laager and continue to smoke.
Ferchrissakes, these
people aren't stupid, they know the health risks, they know they
shouldn't be smoking
and they really want to stop, but the more you pressurise them the more
they are forced to
put on an air of bravado to save face. And just look at all the ways in
which smokers are
threatened and bullied these days. Why the hell should they have to
stand outside office
blocks in the cold when it would be perfectly possible to provide a
smoking room
indoors. Why have airlines banned smoking completely? Just when a
smoker who is a
nervous flyer most needs his fag he is denied it! The airlines say it's
because their
customers have asked for it. Bollocks! If their customers asked them to
ban people with
body odour or people with annoying accents they wouldn't act on it. The
real reason
they've banned smoking is that it makes the planes a little cheaper to
clean, and of
course, smokers are considered fair game for anybody who fancies a pop
at them. There
are few sights less edifying than a pack of superior goodie-goodies
getting their
sanctimonious kicks out of patroniscovery.
She rarely mentioned Gareth except in tones of disappointment, but
there was another name which she mentioned more often, her voice filled
with hate, growing louder as she raved, and I wondered what sort of
creature could possibly rouse such loathing in her, the name Harmony
almost being spat out like venom.
Harmony was her best friend, and it wasn't long until I met her.

I was surprised when one morning, halfway-through a particularly
scintillating episode of "Supermarket Sweep", the doorbell rang, and I
heard Avril pad from the living room to open it.
A well-spoken female voice, full of life and with a warmth in its tone
that was somewhat new to me loudly exclaimed, "Avril! How are you? It's
been so long!"
I was intrigued, but it was only when I heard Avril greet her, that I
realised who it was.
"Harmony! How very good to see you." Avril's voice too seemed changed.
Gone were the muttered obscenities, the hard edge, the taint of a local
accent. They disappeared into the kitchen for about fifteen minutes,
the odd fragment of conversation carrying upstairs through the camp
inanities of Dale Winton and the "Supermarket Sweep" contestants.
I started to despair of ever catching a glimpse of Harmony, when to my
surprise I heard them start to climb the stairs. The footsteps stopped,
the door opened and there, no more than six yards away from me, stood
the object of Avril's hatred and revulsion.
She was quite, quite beautiful. Taller than Avril, slim and elegant,
with a smile that seemed, if you'll excuse the clich?, to light up her
face. Her genuine warmth and naturalness, her ease of movement and
elegance, all seemed to make her one of the most attractive women I'd
ever seen.
Although the split-skirt didn't hurt.
"Have you lost some weight?" asked Avril.
"Why yes. Thank you. I noticed that I'd put on a few pounds, so I
thought I'd nip it in the bud. It's easy to let yourself go when you're
our age."
I saw Avril catch a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. "Yes, I'm
dieting too," said Avril.
"Really? Are you working out or just watching what you eat?"
"Both," replied Avril.
"What do you do? I've heard that the Step work-out is very good,
although I just try to do a little something everyday. There's no point
being obsessive about it."
"Yes, the Step work-out. I do the Step work-out," said Avril.
"Can I look at it?" asked Harmony.
"No! I mean, of course you can, but, well, Gareth's got it. At
work."
Harmony looked perplexed.
"He uses it at lunchtimes."
"Oh.....I see," said Harmony sitting on the edge of the bed. "Well,
perhaps we could make a contract or something. The person who loses the
most weight in six weeks has to buy the other dinner."
Avril grinned. I could tell from the sly look on her face that Avril
realised that where Harmony maybe had a couple of excess pounds to
lose, she had several stones (and that was just on her arse).
"Yes, that's a great idea. Let's do it."
Harmony smiled, and the birds seemed to sing, and the sun seemed to
reveal itself from behind a cloud. I almost expected a few
Disney-rodents to scurry out and break into song in front of her.
But then, as Harmony turned to leave the room, she caught sight of me
on the table.
"I didn't know you and Gareth were trying for a baby."
"Well, we're in no hurry, but we just thought it was about time,"
explained Avril.
"What a coincidence," said Harmony. "Me and Richard are trying for one
too."
"I think you mentioned something about it last time," muttered
Avril.
"No luck yet, but, well, we'll see," said Harmony as she sighed, the
sunlight filtering through the folds of her dress to reveal the
silhouette of her figure.
But as Avril scratched her armpit, I could see her devious little mind
thinking up new plans to best Harmony, new ways of trying to hurt her.
It was obvious that the seemingly-desperate need for a child which had
brought me to the Simples, (and almost crippled Gareth) was simply part
of a plan to start a family before Harmony and Richard. I wondered what
lengths Avril would be driven to to lose weight, now that their little
competition was underway. I could almost imagine it.
The unfortunate thing was though, that Harmony really was too
beautiful, too ethereal even, for motherhood, whereas Avril was
perfectly designed for it. You see, to a trained eye such as my own, an
artisan in such matters, it was quite obvious that Harmony was
infertile. So Richard while undoubtedly having the time of his life,
was unfortunately sowing his affluent seed on rocky ground.
Avril on the other hand was fit to bursting - the merest whiff of sex
and she'd have dropped a sprog, like a great, pink over-ripe flower,
one sharp nudge and she'd have showered the room with children.
But still, believe me on this, because I know - it seemed like
Harmony's beauty was going to live and die with her.
Future generations wouldn't know what they'd missed.

After Harmony's visit, the atmosphere in the Simple household changed
noticeably. Gareth was accosted by Avril even more frequently, and he
started having to "work late in the office," although this did little
to stop Avril who would wait until he arrived home and then have him -
in the hall, the staircase, the living room.....
As much as I liked Avril, I couldn't help but feel sorry for Gareth,
who seemed to slowly become a grey ghost of a man, his eyes
heavy-lidded, a slight limp to his gait.
Imagine my surprise then when, during one of Avril's tirades against
life and Harmony, I discovered that Gareth had gone out with Harmony,
almost ten years before, and were in fact engaged to be married. It was
only then that I realised that the man in the oh-so-familiar
wedding-photograph by the bed was Gareth. Call me cynical, but I just
presumed that the handsome, athletic figure was Avril's first husband,
(although that said, I could understand how years of marriage to Avril
could facilitate such a change).
Avril ranted loudly about another of her plots that had painfully
backfired.
As I say, there was a time, some ten years before, when the domestic
arrangements of the foursome were quite different. Avril had been going
out with Richard then, a still-spotty trainee accountant, and Harmony
was seeing Gareth, the two "beautiful-people" turning heads wherever
they went.
Avril, realising that she could hurt Harmony most profoundly by taking
Gareth from her, embarked on a sexual campaign (although what measures
she could have called on to compete with Harmony confounded me - as I
said, I liked Avril, but Harmony? She seemed almost....sublime). ). I
mean, what could it have been like? Perhaps something like.....
F/X BANAL GAME SHOW SOUND EFFECTS - CANNED LAUGHTER, CHEESY HOST,
CHEESY MUSIC, BEEPS AND BONGS.

AVRIL (Belches). So Gareth, do you love Harmony?
GARETH Yes, I love her more than life itself.
AVRIL Why? She's such a bloody goody-two shoes, with all her luck, and
money and travelling, and all her "what's important in life"
values-rubbish. What on Earth do you see in her. She's an annoying,
patronising, condescending, supercilious old hag. (Belches again). Pass
the chocolate.
GARETH My God, Avril, you're absolutely right! Do you know I'd never
even noticed? I could so easily have wasted my life with her......
Avril. Darling Avril. How can I ever repay you?
AVRIL Well, you can start with passing the chocolates, no not those
ones you moron, the soft-centres, and then you could marry me.
GARETH Marry you? Of course Avril, I've just got to have a game of
squash first.

But no. It couldn't have been like that. I was confusing the people
they had been with the people they had become. It must have been more
like......
MUSIC 1940's DISNEY/HOLLYWOOD-STYLE SWEEPING STRINGS / ANGELIC
CHOIR.
GARETH I love you Avril. From the moment I first set eyes on you I knew
that we were destined to be together, two loves, two lives, intertwined
for all Eternity, the Universe burning with our passion, the gods
weeping at our joy. I want you Avril, with all my heart. I love you and
I want you. My soul yearns for you to turn me from the proud, handsome
man you see before you, into a snivelling, spineless jellyfish. I want
you to take me away from Harmony, to break my heart, chew up the pieces
and then spit out the gooey mess that's left with the contempt that
makes you person you are. Will you do that Avril, will you reduce me to
the status of an aged and syphilitic toad, all for you? Will you do
that for me Avril? Will you?
MUSIC STOPS. (Silence for a few moments).
AVRIL Yeah. Alright.

Or perhaps, if I was more realistic, and more scientific in my
observations of Avril's psychology, it simply went more like
this.

AVRIL Look Gareth, I know Harmony's beautiful, but anyone with half a
brain can see that she'd be a complete plank in bed. Come with me
Gareth, and I'll do everything, no matter how disgusting, deviant,
filthy or unnatural, I'll do it, and I'll love it, because I like it
dirty. So what do you say? Fancy a shag?

Yeah, that was probably more like it.
But whatever, Avril ultimately succeeded in her sexual campaign, and
she and Gareth were married within the year.
The two rejected partners in this scenario however, sought solace with
each other, and over time they fell in love. But as the years had
rolled by and Richard made his first million in development, Gareth had
been worn down to the stumbling figure that he now was.
So Avril pounded around the bedroom, ranting and swearing.
But now that her attention was focused on losing weight, she showed a
discipline and stamina that would put most Olympic athletes to shame.
Dressed in her pink and lime-green lycra, that would, as if seeking
sanctuary from the never-ending stream of American whoops and
exhortations retreat into the folds of her body, she'd pound up and
down on her plastic step, the TV wobbling uncertainly on the edge of
the dressing table as each air-soled paw crashed down onto the
shagpile. For hours on end.
The afternoons spent in front of "Crosswits" and "A Country Practice"
the salivary mix of spittle and Ferrero Rocher seeping from the corner
of her mouth, became no more than a distant memory, as Jane Fonda
followed The Green Goddess followed Mr Motivator.....
She really was like a force of Nature. A great pink wobbling, grunting
and groaning force of nature, single-minded in its approach and utterly
unstoppable - much to Gareth's chagrin, as he slipped on his pyjamas
only to have a flushed and sweating Avril jump on top of him.
You see, sometimes Avril would wake up so stiff that she could barely
walk, so I presumed, as I think Gareth did too judging by his initial
cancelling of a week's worth of squash matches, that Avril would simply
be too tired for sex. But as I say, she was a woman of appetites, so
the shagging.......? The shagging continued.
Still, after the first week I expected the binge, the couple of frozen
pizzas, the "Cadbury's Family Party Grab-bag"..... But it never
happened.
Imagine my surprise therefore, when after three weeks of living on
black coffee, water and half a calorie of kumquat (or whatever it was
she ate) Avril had not lost any weight.
In fact she'd put on a few pounds.
The working out began in earnest.

One day, Gareth came home early from work while Avril was at
"Sainsbury's". It was the first time I'd seen him on his own since I
had joined the Simples, and I was intrigued at what he would do. Would
he dance, and rave and sing like Avril, or perform some squalid
solitary sex-act now that he had the opportunity, or would he, as
I
rather suspected he would, simply make a cup of tea and collapse in
front of the T.V.?
I was confused then, when he shuffled into the bedroom, leaving his
battered briefcase on the bed, and then simply stood in front of the
window, pulled apart the nets, and stared out of it at the
architectural beauties of Milton Keynes. I didn't know there was so
much to look at, but he stared out, for minute after minute, as if
looking beyond the red-brick, the tarmac, the rather contrived and
exactly identical plots of garden, as if seeing beyond this somehow, to
something greater.
I lost track of how long he stood there, looking out at whatever it
was he could see, but finally, he opened a drawer to the dressing table
and took the photograph of Harmony and Richard that was stored there,
and looked at it, again seeming to stare beyond the glass, and the
flimsy image.
He peered into the photo for what seemed like hours, before he threw
it onto the duvet, and sat down on the edge of the bed.
And cried.
I'd never seen Avril cry. She would scream, and laugh, and pout and
rage, but she had never cried.
But as Gareth sat sobbing on the edge of the bed, I think for the
first, and last time, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the proud and
handsome man in the wedding photo.

By the middle of the fifth week, I'd noticed some changes in Avril,
and as you can imagine, she wasn't the kind of woman who went in for
change. So overwhelming seemed her need, so all-consuming her hatred,
that the mumbling and talking to herself tailed off and then
ceased.
I started to worry about her. I found her actions, determination
beyond the point of absurdity, beyond the natural, perhaps even
supernatural you could say, profoundly disturbing.
It was with some trepidation therefore, that one morning after three
hours of "Body-toning with Hari-Krishnamurti," that Avril strode across
the bedroom, grabbing me roughly in her sweaty fist, and took me into
the bathroom. She lowered her soggy knickers, then showered me in her
golden warmth. I tasted the tang of progesterone, that rather sweet
aftertaste of oestrogen just lurking on the edge of my palette, the
fiery zing of lutropin, cooled by the refreshing flavour of estradiol
caressing my taste-buds. I wanted to punch the air with joy, and shout
my ecstasy to the heavens; my chest swelled and still it came; the
piquant delights of gilded news.
And so, with that indescribable joy, I set about my purpose.
I turned pink.
But then the phone rang, and oblivious to my message to her, Avril
slammed me on the wash-basin, pulled up her still soggy leggings, and
went downstairs to answer it.
Yep, Avril was going to be a mommy. There'd soon be the patter of
other tiny air-soled feet as they crashed up and down on their
miniature plastic steps in unison. Avril Simple would live on, beyond
the petty dictates of mere mortality.
Or perhaps rather more disturbingly Gareth Simple would be a
dad.
I longed to tell her that for once, as petty as it was, she had bested
Harmony. I heard her put down the phone, and then start the tirade that
always followed any social contact with Harmony. Apparently she'd
phoned to tell Avril that she had only (Avril later repeated this word
at different volumes and pitches, at first exasperated, then
incredulous, then furious, as if the word itself had only been coined
to take the piss out of her) four pounds.
The power that was Avril Simple moved into the bathroom, pulled the
scales from under the basin and weighed herself.
She hadn't lost an ounce.
She stared in the mirror at her pudgy, blotchy face, the crow's feet
and the laughter-lines, her reflection seeming to recoil from the
hatred, the loathing, the envy in her dark, lidded eyes. I lost track
of how long she stood there, but it was starting to get dark when
slowly, deliberately, she moved into the bedroom.
She stood in front of the net curtains, her form blocking out what was
left of the decaying sun, and slowly, almost insanely, tore her clothes
away from her body. And then, there she stood, naked and exposed to the
world, her tumescent belly, her elephantine hips, her ample breasts, a
parody of the Earth-Mother, as she threw back her head and raised her
arms above her head.
I wanted to tell her that she was pregnant, that the gained weight was
the flab of the developing little Baby-Simple. But I couldn't.
I could only watch as her hair seemed to billow in a wind that
couldn't be there, as the air itself seemed to burn around her, filling
the upper-floor of their Barratt super-home with the smell of
ozone.
Something unnatural was happening in the Simple household. I mean
something really unnatural.
I'd heard her mutter many times about the unfairness of It All - if
only she could give emaciated Harmony a few stone of her flab they
would both be happy, but as Avril mumbled a barely distinguishable
stream of words, words of Ancient Hate, about flab, blubber,
avoirdupois.....and screeched the name Harmony, I recoiled in fear that
Avril, audacious, unstoppable Avril, was actually defying the gods, and
somehow unwittingly putting her plan into action. Almost visible
tendrils of energy, of power, erupted from her formidably Primal
form.
But where perhaps a less-informed eye would just see a chunky woman
venting her frustration, I could see more.
The air carried the alarming scent of inhibited follitropin; of
lutropin released into the atmosphere by an anterior pituitary gland
obsessed with envy. I could smell the decaying stench of a dying corpus
luteum, as Avril seemed to stand, naked but uncaring, in the eye of a
storm. There was a hurricane of energy released from a rotting
endometrium, of follicles being torn from their placental roots by the
wind of jealousy, as little Baby Simple, and the unwanted pounds that
were all it represented to Avril, simply ceased to be, as if torn from
its invisible home and transferred elsewhere.
And finally, as the storm started to abate, Avril, ignorant and
unknowing, let her arms collapse to her sides, and exhausted, stumbled
to the bed and fell asleep.
And I could do nothing but watch in despair, as she, now noticeably
slimmer, lay naked on the covers of the duvet, snoring.

The next few days saw Avril, as if sensing that she was now literally
an empty vessel, trying to fill the yawning space in her belly with
mountains of food. She spoke to no-one, even herself, and Gareth
started to, for the first time since I'd known him, sleep soundly at
night.
This carried on for three days. Until the Friday. "The Day of the
Weigh-In."
That morning, Avril came into the bathroom to powder her nose. As she
lowered herself onto the seat, she caught sight of me on the
wash-basin, still futilely glowing pink.
She stared at me.
For a moment I thought she'd rise and do me again, to check, to make
sure, but she simply turned away and started to piss, before pulling up
her knickers and skirt, and going downstairs to watch "Richard and
Judy".
For Avril was single-minded, obsessive, driven, but she wasn't
dull-witted. And even though she said nothing, I could tell that she
knew.
She just knew.

The rest of "The Day" itself was much the same as the others had been
since Harmony's phone call, except Avril, half-heartedly dressed in
another coup for the Grattans' designer-line, waited in front of the
T.V, apparently ignorant of the skirt's slightly loose fit, the few
inches of bagginess that even the elasticated waistband couldn't
hide.
But then, just as "Home and Away" was about to start, the clouds
seemed to part for the smiling sun to shine on our happy home.
Harmony had obviously arrived.
Avril opened the door, and I heard the lilting beauty of Harmony's
voice. "Oh Avril, I've got the most wonderful news!"
If Avril said anything, I couldn't hear it, but Harmony carried on
regardless. She laughed. "I think I'm pregnant!"
Now I could hear Avril mumbling her congratulations.
"It's so amazing! Richard and I were starting to think there was
something wrong, but then out of the blue, bang! I'm going to be a
mother!"
Harmony continued to rattle on excitedly, when I was shocked to hear
Avril say, her voice cold and stern, "The weigh-in. I want to do the
weigh-in."
Harmony stammered, and I heard Avril, a glowing ember of the old Avril
fanned into temporary flame, start to climb the stairs. "Now."
Silently Harmony followed, and as they entered the bathroom, I could
see what had roused this last vestige of the wrath of Avril
Simple.
Yes, Avril had lost her "weight", but it was the change in Harmony
that struck me most profoundly. In the weeks since I had last seen her
she had put on almost a stone. Her flat toned belly was slightly
rounded, her cheekbones were partly obscured by a layer of fat, and
there was a hint of a double-chin on her formerly swan-like neck. Yet
for all this she was still beautiful - her peaches-and-cream complexion
now flushed with a rosy health. Harmony, I could instantly tell, as
indeed it seemed did Avril, was going to be a mother. And like
everything else she approached in life, she was going to do it
beautifully.
Avril simply glared at her - swathed in black cotton, a black-hole in
the corner of Milton Keynes, a collapsed super-heavy mass, a negative
all-devouring void. And above all, a Force of Nature.
I almost expected the paisley scarf to be thrown off from her shoulder
and for the double-breasted jacket to be pulled apart, to reveal the
awesome event-horizon of Avril Simple - bending the laws of physics,
the Laws of Nature, the Laws of everything that is Good, even, and for
Harmony, like a firefly caught in a tornado, to burn brightly for a
moment before being lost.
Avril pulled the scales from under the basin, climbed onto them, said,
"There. Ten pounds," got off them and kicked them towards Harmony.
Confused, Harmony slowly stepped up onto them as Avril peered down at
the needle. "Ten pounds heavier," she said as Harmony stood uncertainly
on them. "I win."
Then Avril led Harmony downstairs, showed her the door, and caught the
end of "Home and Away".

That evening Avril came into the bathroom, and took me, with a
tenderness I didn't know she possessed, back into the bedroom. She
placed me on the bed-side table and slowly pulled apart the net
curtains and stared out of them. She stood there for what seemed like
hours, until finally I heard the familiar sound of Gareth's Cortina
pulling up outside. As the front door slammed shut and he climbed the
stairs, Avril continued to stare out, as Gareth, whistling and
blissfully unaware, kicked open the door. On seeing Avril his jaw
dropped, and the colour seemed to drain from his cheeks.
"Avril!! I....I thought you were going out to dinner with
Harmony."
Avril didn't move.
Gareth quickly put his briefcase next to the bed, and hurried over to
the wardrobe.
As he hurriedly flung his M&;S shorts and unwashed T-shirt into his
sports-bag he mumbled something about having arranged to meet Richard
for a squash match. Avril turned and impassively watched him.
"Sorry I didn't tell you, but he phoned me at work, and as you were
going out with Harmony, we just decided.....," he muttered.
"There!" he finally said, perhaps a little too triumphantly, as he
found his squash racket, and hurriedly retreated to the door.
"Don't bother with dinner, we'll grab something in the pub," he said
as he picked up his bag with his other hand, and pulled the door open
with his foot.
"Gareth," Avril said, as she watched him try to escape what he
obviously thought was going to be another near-certain genital
pounding.
Gareth stopped, and looked at Avril across the yawning abyss of the
bedroom. Like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an approaching car,
Gareth stood by the door, uncertain of what to expect. Yet Avril, still
unmoving, stared at him from the end of the bed.
"Gareth," she finally said. He tensed noticeably as if readying his
escape.
"Do you love me?"
Gareth looked stunned for a moment, then the squash racket fell limp
in his hand. They stared at each other across the bedroom, the silence
stretching and stretching out........ Finally, he looked down at the
floor. "I'm late," he said quietly, and he turned and slowly left the
room.
Avril continued to look at the empty doorway as the Cortina revved up
outside and then pulled away, before turning back to the window.
She stood up and stared out of it, at the tiny box-like houses dropped
deliberately on the countryside, the little asphalt tributaries
carrying the other Gareth and Avril Simples from A to B; at the neat
hedges trimmed fortnightly by the neighbours, all entering their
gardens at the same time on Sunday mornings to cut them to the same
uniform height.
But she stared on and on as if seeing beyond this, as if staring the
Truth squarely in the eye.
And after seemingly hours of this, Avril Simple collapsed on the edge
of the bed.

And cried.

THE END.

Copyright c James Burr 1999.